Nurses’ duties and patients’ rights have been important foci in nursing. Nurses’ rights legitimate the power and responsibility of the profession. There are few published articles on this subject in the nursing science literature. This article is a theoretical examination of nurses’ rights that aims to structure (i.e. show the internal logic of) those that have been little studied. It is based on the philosophical literature and published research. Nurses’ rights can be divided into: human and civil rights, rights based (...) on health care legislation, professional rights, and earned rights. In this context, professional rights relate to nursing and also to tasks shared with other health care professions. Analyzing nurses’ rights will help to promote these rights, improve nurses’ position both nationally and internationally, and provide possibilities for enhancing patient care. (shrink)

Protecting human subjects from being exploited is one of the main ethical challenges for clinical research. However, there is also a responsibility to protect and respect the communities who are hosting the research. Recently, attention has focused on the most efficient way of carrying out clinical research, so that it benefits society by providing valuable research while simultaneously protecting and respecting the human subjects and the communities where the research is conducted. Collaboration between partners plays an important role and that (...) is why we carried out a study to describe how collaborative partnership and social value are emerging in clinical research. A supra-analysis design for qualitative descriptive secondary analysis was employed to consider a novel research question that pertained to nurse leaders’ perceptions of ethical recruitment in clinical research and the ethics-related aspects of clinical research from the perspective of administrative staff. The data consisted of two separate pre-existing datasets, comprising 451 pages from 41 interviews, and we considered the research question by using deductive-inductive content analysis with NVivo software. A deductive analysis matrix was generated on the basis of two requirements, namely collaborative partnership and social value, as presented in An Ethical Framework for Biomedical Research by Emanuel et al. The findings showed that collaborative partnership was a cornerstone for ethical clinical research and ways to foster inter-partner collaboration were indicated, such as supporting mutual respect and equality, shared goals and clearly defined roles and responsibilities. In addition, the social value of clinical research was an important precondition for ethical clinical research and its realisation required the research partners to demonstrate collaboration and shared responsibility during the research process. However, concerns emerged that the multidimensional meaning of clinical research for society was not fully recognised. Achieving greater social value for clinical research required greater transparency, setting research priorities, shared responsibility for the dissemination and use of the findings and stronger community awareness of the ethics-related aspects of clinical research. Collaborative partnership and social values are essential for protecting the human subjects and communities involved in clinical research. (shrink)

Background:Moral courage is defined as courage to act according to one’s own ethical values and principles even at the risk of negative consequences for the individual. In a complex nursing practice, ethical considerations are integral. Moral courage is needed throughout nurses’ career.Aim:To analyse graduating nursing students’ moral courage and the factors associated with it in six European countries.Research design:A cross-sectional design, using a structured questionnaire, as part of a larger international ProCompNurse study. In the questionnaire, moral courage was assessed with (...) a single question (visual analogue scale 0–100), the questionnaire also covered several background variables.Participants and research context:The sample comprised graduating nursing students (n = 1796) from all participating countries. To get a comprehensive view about graduating nursing students’ moral courage, the views of nurse managers (n = 538) and patients (n = 1327) from the same units in which the graduating nursing students practised were also explored, with parallel questionnaires.Ethical considerations:Ethical approvals and research permissions were obtained according to national standards in every country and all participants gave their informed consent.Results:The mean of graduating nursing students’ self-assessed moral courage was 77.8 (standard deviation 17.0; on a 0–100 scale), with statistically significant differences between countries. Higher moral courage was associated with many factors, especially the level of professional competence. The managers assessed the graduating nursing students’ moral courage lower (66.5; standard deviation 18.4) and the patients slightly higher (80.6; standard deviation 19.4) than the graduating nursing students themselves.Discussion and conclusions:In all countries, the graduating nursing students’ moral courage was assessed as rather high, with differences between countries and populations. These differences and associations between moral courage and ethics education require further research. (shrink)

Contextualist accounts of aesthetic predicates have difficulties explaining why we feel that speakers are disagreeing when they make true and compatible but superficially contradictory aesthetic judgments. One possible way to account for the disagreement is hybrid expressivism, which holds that the disagreement happens at the level of pragmatically conveyed, clashing contents about the speakers’ conative states. Marques defends such a strategy, combining dispositionalism about value, contextualism, and hybrid expressivism. This paper critically evaluates the plausibility of the suggested pragmatic mechanisms in (...) conveying the kind of contents Marques takes to explain disagreements. The positive part suggests an alternative account of how aesthetic judgments are sources of information about speakers’ conative aesthetic states. (shrink)

Many generativist accounts argue for very early knowledge of inflection on the basis of very low rates of person/number marking errors in young children's speech. However, studies of Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese have revealed that these low overall error rates actually hide important differences across the verb paradigm. The present study investigated children's production of person/number marked verbs by eliciting present tense verb forms from 82 native Finnish-speaking children aged 2;2–4;8 years. Four main findings were observed: Rates of person/number marking (...) errors were higher in low-frequency person/number contexts, even excluding children who showed no evidence of having learned the relevant morpheme, most errors involved the use of higher frequency forms in lower frequency person/number contexts, error rates were predicted not only by the frequency of person/number contexts but also by the frequency of individual “ready-inflected” lexical target forms, and for low-frequency verbs, lower error rates were observed for verbs with high phonological neighborhood density. It is concluded that any successful account of the development of verb inflection will need to incorporate both rote-storage and retrieval of individual inflected forms and phonological analogy across them. (shrink)

We are currently experiencing a planetary crisis that will lead, if worst comes to worst, to the end of the entire world as we know it. Several feminist scholars have suggested that if the Earth is to stay livable for humans and nonhumans alike, the ways in which many human beings – particularly in the wealthy parts of the world, infested with Eurocentrism, colonialism, neoliberalism, and capitalism – inhabit this planet requires radical, ethical, and political transformation. In this article, we (...) propose that feminist theory, particularly feminist posthumanities, and Black feminist and decolonial thought, together with creative practices such as writing, have much to contribute to transformative planetary activism that imagines different and other kinds of worlds and futures based on an ethical consideration of nonhuman others and collective caring for the planet. (shrink)

How Moderate Relativists Should Explain the Appearance of Disagreements About Taste Moderate relativists such as Kölbel and Lasersohn have motivated the semantic framework by arguing that unlike contextualism, it can explain why there appear to be disagreements of taste. The solution relies on the relativist notion of a proposition whose truth depends on a judge parameter. This notion coupled with the view that contradicting propositions create an appearance of disagreement allegedly enables them to secure the right predictions. This paper questions (...) the argumentative strategy by showing that there are no basis to infer pragmatic data from formal semantics. I then present a way to understand the relativist framework from the point of view of mental representation. The view put forward explains the missing relation between the semantic framework and pragmatics, and predicts why there is an appearance of disagreements about taste. (shrink)

Although Judith Butler's theorization of violence has begun to receive growing scholarly attention, the feminist theoretical background of her notion of violence remains unexplored. In order to fill this lacuna, this article explicates the feminist genealogy of Butler's notion of violence. I argue that Butler's theorization of violence can be traced back to Gender Trouble, to her discussion of Monique Wittig's argument that the binary categorization of sex can be conceived as a form of discursive violence. I contend, first, that (...) Butler starts to develop her notion of “gender violence” on the basis of her reading of Wittig, and second, that Butler's more recent writings on military violence and the ethics of nonviolence build on her early interpretation of Wittig. On the basis of my reading, I suggest, in contrast to recent criticism, that Butler's later critique of violence is not at odds with but rather expands upon her prior work on violence. (shrink)

Meri Genetz was a Finnish painter, esotericist, and a spiritual seeker. Around 1925, she began truly dedicating herself to spiritual seeking and started to make notes of her studies in black notebooks. This article will go through four of those notebooks which today offer a vivid picture of Genetz’s seeking between the years 1925 and 1943. In the beginning, Genetz acquainted herself with Gnosticism, Theosophy, and Kabbalah, as well as the works of Christian mystics, such as Emanuel Swedenborg and Jakob (...) Böhme, the writings of, for example, Paracelsus, and texts attributed to the mythic figure Hermes Trismegistus. Gradually Genetz started to outline her own views, ideas, and theories regarding higher truth and spiritual wisdom. In the beginning of the 1930s her main quest came to be to find her ‘other half’ and become whole. She started attending Spiritualist séances, where she would ask about her other half and discuss the state of her soul, the souls of others, her art and marriage, and the books she had read. In time, Genetz’s quest for true wisdom and self-fulfilment became more and more restless and impatient. When she died in 1943, she was still seeking. (shrink)

New and complex technologies are exceedingly present and in widespread use in contemporary cities globally. The urban lifeworld is saturated with various applications of information and computing technologies, but also more rudimentary forms of technology construct and create the urban everyday life as we know it. Many forms of urban technologies are perceived first through their everyday aesthetic qualities: how they look, feel, sound, or are otherwise encountered within the streetscape. Philosophical aesthetics, however, has tended to overlook everyday technologies as (...) a topic, often due to unquestioned ideas of how a city should ideally look and feel. Thus, a more realistic approach to contemporary cities is needed, in which the deep-seated role of technologies is recognized and the experiences related to their entangled uses become acknowledged. This paper brings together recent developments in urban aesthetics with some of the core ideas of postphenomenological approaches to new urban technologies. (shrink)

Learning through social interaction has been documented widely; however, how introverted people are socially engaged in learning is largely unknown. The aim of this study was, first, to examine the reliability and validity of the social engagement scale among students at Finnish comprehensive schools. Then, we aimed to examine the interaction effect of introversion and social engagement on self-esteem, schoolwork engagement, and school burnout. Based on a sample of 862 ninth grade students in Finland, we found that a two-factor model (...) best fitted the social engagement scale (i.e., social engagement and social disengagement). Further, we found that introverts with high social engagement have higher self-esteem than introverts with low social engagement. Our results implied that introverts should be given extra support when they encounter group work in school. (shrink)

Objective: Traditionally, asymmetric spatial processing has been assessed with paper-and-pencil tasks, but growing evidence indicates that computer-based methods are a more sensitive assessment modality. It is not known, however, whether simply converting well-established paper-and-pencil methods into a digital format is the best option. The aim of the present study was to compare sensitivity in detecting contralesional omissions of two different computer-based methods: a “digitally converted” cancellation task was compared with a computer-based Visual and Auditory dual-tasking approach, which has already proved (...) to be very sensitive.Methods: Participants included 40 patients with chronic unilateral stroke in either the right hemisphere or the left hemisphere and 20 age-matched healthy controls. The cancellation task was implemented on a very large format or in a smaller paper-and-pencil version. The computer-based dual-tasks were implemented on a 15′′ monitor and required the detection of unilateral and bilateral briefly presented lateralized targets.Results: Neither version of the cancellation task was able to show spatial bias in RH patients. In contrast, in the Visual dual-task RH patients missed significantly more left-sided targets than controls in both unilateral and bilateral trials. They also missed significantly more left-sided than right-sided targets only in the bilateral trials of the Auditory dual-task.Conclusion: The dual-task setting outperforms the cancellation task approach even when the latter is implemented on a screen. Attentionally demanding methods are useful for revealing mild forms of contralesional visuospatial deficits. (shrink)

The pervasiveness of technology has changed the way urban everyday is structured and experienced. An understanding of the deep impact of this development on everyday experience and its foundational aesthetic components is necessary in order to determine how skills and capacities can be improved in coping with such change, as well as managing it. Urban technology solutions—how they are defined, applied and used—are changing the sphere of everyday experience for urban dwellers. Philosophical and applied approaches to urban aesthetics offer perspectives (...) on understanding technologically mediated sensory experiences within the urban realm. This chapter shows how new urban technologies act as an agent of change within the familiar urban environment. We outline how the perspective of philosophical aesthetics can be used to understand urban technologies and their role in the constitution of everyday urban lifeworlds. (shrink)

This study examines the complex relation between spatial experience and aesthetic experience. It is argued that spatial experience specifically in the context of everyday spaces makes it possible to experience them aesthetically as well. A wide selection of research ranging from environmental and philosophical aesthetics to architectural theory, psychology, human geography, and other relevant disciplines is employed in order to achieve a more detailed picture of how spatial experience is formed in the first place. This experience is described mainly in (...) terms of phenomenology but is then related to other ways of understanding experiences and their prerequisites. -/- Different notions of space and spatiality and a more comprehensive articulation of the relation of perception to spatial experience, sensory perception, and how senses contribute to spatial experience are in the focus of attention at the beginning of the study. Different experiential layers that can be distinguished within the space which is closest experienced are explored. Interaction with environment is discussed and the notion of preaesthetic is presented to clarify the relation between the two different types of experiences. Following this, the notion of preaesthetic is studied against eminent notions such as aesthetic attitude and aesthetic engagement that show elements that have traditionally been considered to either lead to or define aesthetic experiences. -/- This study shows that the effect that spatial experience has on revealing aesthetic potentialities in everyday environments is far more complicated than has previously been understood. Due to its contingent qualities, spatial experience sometimes leads to "failed" aesthetic experiences even in situations where there is obvious aesthetic potentiality. Even though there are some overlapping qualities in spatial and aesthetic experiences, they cannot thus be equated, as has more or less been done in different branches studying the topics of art and architectural experiences, for example. In the final part of the study, some possible directions for future research are pointed out and the application possibilities of these new developments in aesthetic theory are presented by short case studies, in which a closer look is taken into a chosen set of urban everyday spaces. (shrink)

The field of weather and climate ethics is a novel branch of applied ethics, based on environmental sciences and philosophy. Due to recent scientific findings concerning climate change, intentional weather and climate modification schemes have become even more relevant to finding feasible ways to moderate climate change and therefore are in need of careful analysis. When, if ever, can weather modification be deemed morally acceptable? The risks and adverse side-effects as well as indifference with regard to the limits of intervention (...) in natural processes present a case for calling weather modification proposals into question. This review article presents the central ethical research questions of weather ethics from a multidisciplinary perspective. (shrink)

This article studies how counsellors in careers training respond to students' problematic advice requests. Conversation analysis is used to examine two strategies counsellors employ when students request advice regarding matters that, according to counselling concepts, they should deal with themselves. The counsellors manage this situation in two ways. They may respond to the request but sanction it afterwards - this happens when the counsellor has offered the student a chance to ask questions, and the student uses this opportunity to request (...) advice. Another, more cautious strategy is to withhold advice and shape the interaction into a questioning sequence, after which the advice can be given as a reaction to the student's response. Examples of both strategies are analysed. It is suggested that, by avoiding taking the role of service-provider, the counsellors orient to the aim of the students' self-directedness. This phenomenon is discussed as a characteristic of counselling interaction. (shrink)

The role and function of public art is currently undergoing some large-scale changes. Many new artworks which are situated within the already existing urban sphere, seem to be changing the definition of public art, each in their own way. Simultaneously, there exists a trend that endorses more traditional forms of public art. Juxtaposing and comparing the aesthetic implications of different types of artworks, it is possible to see how they contribute to the contemporary understanding of the urban sphere. In this (...) paper, I take a look at the explicit and implicit aesthetic values that these simultaneously existing contemporary forms of public art are based on. The cases selected for closer look are examples of prominent and recent works of public art from downtown Helsinki: He who Brings the Light by Pekka Kauhanen and Running Man by Nestori Syrjala. What space and what kind of position is subscribed to the perceiver by these very different types of yet equally established artworks? What kind of experiences and possibilities of participation do these works entail? The focus is on the undergoing redefinition of public art that revolves around these questions. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to deepen the concept of emerging urban mobility technology. Drawing on philosophical everyday and urban aesthetics, as well as the postphenomenological strand in the philosophy of technology, we explicate the relation between everyday aesthetic experience and urban mobility commoning. Thus, we shed light on the central role of aesthetics for providing depth to the important experiential and value-driven meaning of contemporary urban mobility. We use the example of self-driving vehicle (SDV), as potentially mundane, public, (...) dynamic, and social urban robots, for expanding the range of perspectives relevant for our relations to urban mobility technology. We present the range of existing SDV conceptualizations and contrast them with experiential and aesthetic understanding of urban mobility. In conclusion, we reflect on the potential undesired consequences from the depolitization of technological development, and potential new pathways for speculative thinking concerning urban mobility futures in responsible innovation processes. (shrink)

The experienced quality of urban environments has not traditionally been at the forefront of understanding how cities evolve through time. Within the humanistic tradition, the temporal dimension of cities has been dealt with through tracing urban or architectural histories or interpreting science-fiction scenarios, for example. However, attempts at understanding the relation between currently existing components of cities and planning based on them, towards the future, has not captured the experience of the temporal layers of cities to a satisfying degree. Contemporary (...) urban environments comprise both lasting and fairly stable elements as well as those that change continuously: change is an inevitable part of urban life. Different aspects of city life evolve with a different tempo: urban nature has its cycles, inhabitants their rhythms, and building materials and styles different lifespans, for example. Recognizing them becomes an especially important issue when future imaginaries are projected onto existing urban structures and when decisions about the details of urban futures are made. This paper aims at bringing environmental and urban aesthetics into the discussion about the possible directions of urban futures. The focus is on introducing the notion of aesthetic sustainability as a tool to better understand how urban futures unfold experientially and how aesthetic values of urban environments develop with time. This concept has some background in the field of design theory, more specifically in sustainable usage and product design, but it has not so far been used in order to study large scale living environments. The concept can prove to be a valuable supporting tool in urban sustainability transformations based on how it captures the experiential side of the physical and temporal dimensions of cities. (shrink)

Lectio Praecursoria 5.10.2018: Artikkeli on väitöstilaisuudessa esitetyn englanninkielisen lectio praecursorian käännös. Väitöskirja tutkii ranskalaisfilosofi Michel Foucault’n kokemuksen käsitteitä sekä teemoja, joita hän käsittelee näiden käsitteiden avulla. Analysoimalla eri kokemuksen käsitteitä Foucault'n filosofiassa voimme paitsi ymmärtää paremmin hänen länsimaiseen nykyajatteluun olennaisesti vaikuttanutta työtään myös peilata käsityksiämme terveydestä, mielenterveysongelmista ja itseen kohdistuvista käytännöistä. Usein häneen viitataan ajattelijana, joka kyseenalaistaa kokemusnäkökulman lähtökohtana tieteelliselle tiedolle. Kokemuksen käsitteillä on kuitenkin erityisasema Foucault’n varhaisissa, psykiatriaa ja psykologiaa käsittelevissä kirjoituksissa sekä hänen myöhäisissä etiikkaa tutkivissa teksteissään, joissa hän (...) palaa käsittelemään terveyden ja huolenpidon teemoja. Teksteistä löytyy runsaasti viitteitä ”elettyyn kokemukseen”, ”taustakokemukseen”, ”transformatiiviseen kokemukseen”, ”rajakokemukseen”, ”kokemuksen kenttään” ja ”kokemuksen muotoihin”. Väitöskirja siis asettaa kokemuksen Foucault’n filosofian keskiöön ja analysoi kokemuksen käsitteiden teoreettisia tehtäviä ja merkityksiä. Tutkimus käsittelee myös sitä, minkälaiseksi kokemuksen itsestä on ajateltu muodostuvan filosofisissa traditioissa, joissa kehotetaan kuuntelemaan ja tarkastelemaan itseä, kääntymään itseen, uskomaan itseensä sekä löytämään itsensä. Lopulta tutkimus nivoo kokemusteeman yhteen Foucault’n kriittisen filosofian kanssa. (shrink)

Michel Foucault’s (1926–1984) thought is widely used in the humanities and social sciences for investigating experiences of madness, illness, marginalization and social conflicts. However, the meaning of the word “experience” is not always clearly defined, and the French word expérience has a whole variety of meanings. In this article I explicate Foucault’s most relevant concepts of experience and their theoretical functions. He refers to experience throughout his career, especially in his early texts on existential psychiatry from the 1950s and 1960s (...) and in his late work from the 1980s. Texts such as Mental Illness and Psychology and Dire vrai sur soi-même have received less attention than Foucault’s most famous books, but they show that references to experience form significant theoretical and thematic links between his earlier investigations of mental distress and his late work on ethics. When Foucault reorganizes his work in the 1980s, he looks back to his early work in his search for a new concept of experience. I argue that in these contexts, experience cannot be understood as an outcome of activity that organizes perceptions and leads to objective knowledge, but experiences are not defined as events produced by discourses, either. I demonstrate in this article how Foucault uses the concept of experience to structure his research on ethical subjectivity and cultural practices of care. At the same time the article questions some standard interpretations of his work. (shrink)

Yksinäisyyttä pidetään yleisesti vakavana yhteiskunnallisena ongelmana. Yksinäisyys kuitenkin ymmärretään monin eri tavoin, mikä herättää filosofisia kysymyksiä siitä, minkälaisena ilmiönä sitä tulisi tutkia. Artikkelissa käsittelen erilaisia yksinäisyyden muotoja erityisesti koetun yksinäisyyden näkökulmasta. Tutkin yksinäisyyttä sellaisten tunteiden filosofian nykysuuntausten avulla, jotka painottavat tunteiden ja ilmapiirien vuorovaikutuksellista muodostumista. Väitän, etteivät koetun yksinäisyyden näkökulma ja tunteiden filosofinen lähestymistapa tarkoita ilmiön yhteiskunnallisten tekijöiden sivuuttamista. Koska yksinäisyyttä ei voi erottaa yhteiskunnallisesta tilanteestaan ja tavoista, joilla ihmissuhteet kulttuurisesti järjestyvät, käsittelen artikkelissa koettua yksinäisyyttä myös poliittisen filosofian konteksteissa.

In this article, we investigate the relationship between loneliness and misogyny amongst the online movement of “involuntary celibates” (incels) that has become widely known through several violent attacks. While loneliness plays a prominent role in the incels’ self-descriptions, we lack a comprehensive analysis of their experience of loneliness and its role in their radicalization. Our article offers such an analysis. We analyze how loneliness is felt, described, and implicitly understood by incels, investigate the normative presumptions underlying their experiences, and critically (...) reflect on the political function of their discourse of loneliness. We claim that it is the affective mechanism of ressentiment that transforms loneliness into antagonistic emotions and show how loneliness is exacerbated rather than alleviated through the incel community. Finally, we point to the relevance of our analysis for contemporary philosophical and feminist loneliness studies. (shrink)

A literature review of 98 articles concerning clinical pain research in newborn infants was conducted to evaluate how researchers report the ethical issues related to their studies and how journals guide this reporting. The articles were published in 49 different scientific journals. The ethical issues most often mentioned were parental informed consent (94%) and ethical review approval (87%). In 75% of the studies the infants suffered pain during the research when placebo, no treatment or otherwise inadequate pain management was applied. (...) Discussion about benefits versus harm to research participants was lacking. A quarter of the journals did not have any ethical guidelines for submitted manuscripts. We conclude that ethical considerations did not play a significant role in the articles studied. Missing and superficial guidelines enable authors to offer studies with fragile research ethics. (shrink)

Sample quotes from emails sent by visitors to Mary Klages's successful literary theory web pages on which this book is based: 'Finding your course was a godsend ...

Some commentators have condemned Kant’s moral project from a feminist perspective based on Kant’s apparently dim view of women as being innately morally deficient. Here I will argue that although his remarks concerning women are unsettling at first glance, a more detailed and closer examination shows that Kant’s view of women is actually far more complex and less unsettling than that attributed to him by various feminist critics. My argument, then, undercuts the justification for the severe feminist critique of Kant’s (...) moral project. (shrink)

BICKNELLJEANETTE, JUDKINSJENNIFER AND KORSMEYERCAROLYN Routledge. 2020. PP. 314. £120.

In the Philippines, all transplant centers are mandated by the Department of Health (DOH) to have a Hospital Transplant Ethics Committee (HTEC) to ensure that donations are altruistic, voluntary and free of coercion/commercial transactions. This study was undertaken primarily to describe the organizational and functional profile of existing HTECs and identify areas for improvement. This is a descriptive cross‐sectional study. There was variation in their logistical arrangements (support from hospital, filing systems, office spaces), operations (length and frequency of meetings, number (...) of referrals) and membership (composition, qualifications, occupation, training). The approval rate for donor‐recipient pairs is high with the majority of cases made by living non‐related donors. Appropriate reasons were cited for rejection. The perception of HTECs is that they are competent and confident in their decision‐making. However, there is a need to standardize HTEC composition, provide operating procedures and additional training which can be done by the DOH. (shrink)

En quoi consiste, ou devrait consister, l'éthique professionnelle en enseignement? Comment se manifeste-t- elle dans les gestes pédagogiques? Selon quels critères peut-on la juger? Comment développer l'éthique professionnelle dans le cadre des formations initiale et continue en enseignement? En tenant compte du contexte social et culturel du Québec, des principes éthiques déjà énoncés par le ministère de l'Education ainsi que des lois, codes et conventions ayant des incidences sur la pratique enseignante, les auteures présentent des éléments à considérer pour la (...) réflexion éthique sur l'agir professionnel. Elles proposent des clarifications conceptuelles et un certain nombre de repères et de balises afin de guider les enseignants et de stimuler la discussion sur l'éthique professionnelle, non seulement dans la classe, mais aussi dans l'école et dans la société. (shrink)

Classical logic has proved inadequate in various areas of computer science, artificial intelligence, mathematics, philosopy and linguistics. This is an introduction to extensions of first-order logic, based on the principle that many-sorted logic (MSL) provides a unifying framework in which to place, for example, second-order logic, type theory, modal and dynamic logics and MSL itself. The aim is two fold: only one theorem-prover is needed; proofs of the metaproperties of the different existing calculi can be avoided by borrowing them from (...) MSL. To make the book accessible to readers from different disciplines, whilst maintaining precision, the author has supplied detailed step-by-step proofs, avoiding difficult arguments, and continually motivating the material with examples. Consequently this can be used as a reference, for self-teaching or for first-year graduate courses. (shrink)

How is hope to be found amid the ethical and political dilemmas of modern life? Writer and philosopher Mary Zournazi brought her questions to some of the most thoughtful intellectuals at work today. She discusses "joyful revolt" with Julia Kristeva, the idea of "the rest of the world" with Gayatri Spivak, the "art of living" with Michel Serres, the "carnival of the senses" with Michael Taussig, the relation of hope to passion and to politics with Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau. (...) A dozen stimulating minds weigh in with their visions of a better social and political order. The result is a collaboration - of writing, of thinking, and of politics - that demonstrates more clearly than any single-authored project could how ideas encountering one another can produce the vision needed for social change. (shrink)

Plato famously promised to complement the Sophist and the Statesman with another work on a third sort of expert, the philosopher--but we do not have this final dialogue. Mary Louise Gill argues that Plato promised the Philosopher, but did not write it, in order to stimulate his audience and encourage his readers to work out, for themselves, the portrait it would have contained. The Sophist and Statesman are themselves members of a larger series starting with the Theaetetus, Plato's investigation of (...) knowledge, and the whole series relies on the Parmenides, the second part of which presents a philosophical exercise, introduced as the first step in a larger philosophical program. Gill contends that the dialogues leading up to the missing Philosopher, though they reach some substantive conclusions, are philosophical exercises of various sorts designed to train students in dialectic, the philosopher's method; and that a second version of the Parmenides exercise, closely patterned on it, spans parts of the Theaetetus and Sophist and brings the philosopher into view. This is the exercise about being, the subject-matter studied by Plato's philosopher. Plato hides the pieces of the puzzle and its solution in plain sight, forcing his students (and modern readers) to dig out the pieces and reconstruct the project. Gill reveals how, in finding the philosopher through the exercise, the student becomes a philosopher by mastering his methods. She shows that the target of Plato's exercise is internally related to its pedagogical purpose. (shrink)

"Charming, interesting, thought-provoking and a great read." Rosalind Hursthouse The daughter of a pacifist rector who answered "No!" when his congregation asked him "Is everything in the bible true?", perhaps Mary Midgley was destined to become a philosopher. Yet few would have thought this inquisitive, untidy, nature-loving child would become "one of the sharpest critical pens in the west." This is her remarkable story. Probably the only philosopher to have been in Vienna on the eve of its invasion by Nazi (...) Germany in 1938 and dance in Trafalgar Square on VE day seven year later, she studied philosophy at Oxford in the same year as Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot, all of whom became close friends. Midgley tells us in vivid and humorous fashion how they cut a swathe through the arid landscape of 1950s British philosophy, writing and arguing - often with each other - about the grand themes of character, beauty and the meaning of rudeness while the spectral figure of Ludwig Wittgenstein hovered in the background. She also charts the highs and lows of philosophy and academia in Britain. On joining the Reading philosophy department on £400 a year in 1949, she doubled its staff complement. But her many years at Newcastle University - where Mike Brearley, who later captained England at cricket, also used to teach - were rewarded with the closure of the philosophy department in the 1980s. The mother of three children, her journey is also one of a woman who in the 1950s and 1960s was fighting to combine a professional career with raising a family. In startling contrast to many of the academic stars of her generation, we learn that Midgley nearly became a novelist and started writing philosophy only when in her fifties, suggesting that Minerva's owl really does fly at dusk. Plainly told like her philosophy, this is an elegiac and moving account of friendships found and lost, bitter philosophical battles and of a profound love of teaching all too rarely acknowledged today. (shrink)

We know we have thoughts, but are we aware that we have styles of thought? This book, written by one of the most gifted and celebrated social thinkers of our time, is a contribution to understanding the rules of the different styles of thinking. Author Mary Douglas takes us through a range of thought styles from the vulgar to the refined. Throughout this fascinating journey, Thought Styles shows us how the different styles work and how outsiders can learn the styles (...) of insiders. The discussion ranges from the style of folklore to the styles of therapy, shopping, religion, and animal rights. The result is a book full of insight. Readers will find themselves thinking in new ways about the mechanics of communication in everyday life. Professionals and researchers in sociology, communication, and anthropology will especially appreciate this auspicious new book. (shrink)